How YouTube pranksters tricked an unmanned Amazon ‘smart’ store into not charging them for their food by simply replacing it on the shelves with bags of SAND weighing the same amount
- Archie Manners and Josh Pieters boast 1.46million subscribers on YouTube
- The duo claim they bi-passed the 2,000+ sensors that watch your every move
- As well as the shelves that keep track of products you take off by weighing them
- The pair say they did this by replacing Sainsbury’s-bought goods with sand
YouTube pranksters have tricked an unmanned Amazon store into not charging them for food worth £25 after replacing it on the shelves with bags of sand weighing the same amount
Boasting 1.46million subscribers on their YouTube channel, Archie Manners and Josh Pieters, set out to fool one of the world’s biggest companies by not paying for goods at one of its cashierless tech stores.
The duo’s video shows them bi-passing the over 2,000 sensors that watch your every move and scales on shelves in lieu of any staff checking your scanning items at the Amazon Fresh store in London.
To achieve this they bought products at Sainsbury’s and replaced them with sand and water so they could go back to Amazon Fresh and put fake items on the shelf.
They then walked out of the Amazon store with £25-worth of items for free.
In another video the pair have appeared to trick anti-vaxxer Piers Corbyn into being willing to accept £10,000 in exchange for an end to criticising AstraZeneca in his speeches.
Boasting 1.46million subscribers on YouTube, Archie Manners and Josh Pieters, pictured eating a cream egg they did buy outside an Amazong Fresh store, set out to fool one of the world’s biggest companies by not paying for goods at one of its cashierless tech stores
Before making their move, they cased the Amazon Fresh shop, demonstrating in the video that if you pick up an item from a shelve, which has scales, Amazon knows you have picked up the product.
Josh said: ‘When I pick it up it knows I’ve picked it up and if I walk out with it it knows I’ve pick it up and will charge it to my Amazon account
‘If I put it back it knows it’s been put back and I won’t get charged.’
The pair then demonstrated this with a Cadbury’s cream egg and then left the store.
This was then set out on their plan to trick the store by going back in with the replacement items from Sainsbury’s filled with sand and water.
They did this by buying £25 worth of shopping from Sainsbury’s and then replacing the exact same products that Amazon also stock with sand and water.
Their prank was done by buying £25 worth of shopping from Sainsbury’s and then replacing the exact same products that Amazon also stock with sand and water
A Cadbury’s Easter egg, a packet of Kellogg’s Fruit ‘n’ Fibre, a Pot Noodle, Kettle crisps, Heinz Cream of Tomato packet soup and a bottle of wine that were replaced with similar weights that they checked.
And they also set up another Amazon account – not their own, called ‘Robert Da shop’ – to use while shopping.
Returning to Amazon Fresh in Kensington with their fake items, Archie and Josh put the fake items on the shelf and took the real ones home.
Not being able to resist, they took some Mini-eggs as a control and were billed for those.
They then went back to Sainsbury’s to get a refund and ended up with their money back and free food.
A Cadbury’s Easter egg, a packet of Kellogg’s Fruit ‘n’ Fibre and a bottle of wine that were replaced with similar weights
Archie told the Times that they consulted a lawyer beforehand and it was not illegal because they did not intend to ‘permanently deprive’ Amazon of the goods
Archie told the Times that they consulted a lawyer beforehand and it was not illegal because they did not intend to ‘permanently deprive’ Amazon of the goods.
In a video they also claim it’s because Amazon’s slogan at its fresh stores is to ‘just walk out’ and they would be ‘just walking out’ with their goods and ‘accidentally leaving some others behind’.
Later on a friend went back into Amazon Fresh to buy back the items so a customer did not mistakenly purchase the sand-filled items.
He added: ‘If anything, we’re showing Amazon where there might be vulnerabilities in their system and where they might need to tighten things up so this doesn’t happen in the future.
‘As we said in the video, we wouldn’t encourage anyone to do this so if anything, maybe it was just a bit of free help to Amazon.
‘Looking at it, you might take the opinion that man can outwit machines but also big companies might want to think twice before getting rid of their human workforces, because perhaps a human is better at keeping a shop order than a machine is right now.’
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